


Bucky Barnes: Sunscreen Assassin

by newsbypostcard



Series: Comedy Oneshots [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Beaches, Humor, M/M, Summer, suggestive sunscreen spurting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-30
Updated: 2018-07-30
Packaged: 2019-06-18 23:32:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15497262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newsbypostcard/pseuds/newsbypostcard
Summary: “I’m not wearing sunscreen,” Steve said flatly.Steve now denies this constituted ‘issuing a challenge,' but Bucky knows a mission objective when he hears one.





	Bucky Barnes: Sunscreen Assassin

**Author's Note:**

> Lightly edited from its previous iteration on [tumblr](http://newsbypostcard.tumblr.com/post/175383445786/bucky-barnes-sunscreen-assassin).

  


Bucky never thought he’d wind up using his combat skills like this.

“They invented sunscreen for a reason,” he reminded Steve.

“I know.” Steve had tried to sound nonchalant, but the fact is that even with the serum, he still burns faster and with more intensity than anyone Bucky’s ever met. After a long six hours at the beach, Steve was in agony, lying on the floor in the kitchen because the tiles were a little bit chilly no matter the season. He was trying to wait out the desperate hour before the serum got with the program and washed him out again. 

“UV rays are real,” Bucky said. “They’re out there.”

“I know," said Steve.

“People have died of sunburn.”

“Is that true?"

" _Yes_." 

"Even if it is," Steve said obtusely, "it wouldn’t kill _me._ ”

“It’s the principle of the thing.” Bucky prodded Steve’s shoulder with his toe just to hear him hiss about it. “This is preventable. You're disrespecting countless sunburn sufferers across the world, _choosing_ this when some people would _kill_ to have the sunscreen resources—”

“I’m not wearing sunscreen,” Steve said flatly.

Steve now denies this constituted ‘issuing a challenge,' but Bucky knows a mission objective when he hears one.

“Uh,” Sam says next time they’re at the beach, when Bucky flies out of nowhere to wrestle Steve to the ground with his sunscreen-covered hands.

“No,” Steve says sternly, fighting back. It’s not even about the sunscreen for Bucky anymore. It’s about Steve being a stubborn fucking bastard. Bucky’s also not totally sure he can take another day of watching Steve stand in the bathroom, rolling the peeling skin off his person with an expression of distaste, as though molting an entire layer of skin is an unpleasant but normal human behavior after passing an afternoon at the beach.

“You,” Bucky seethes through his teeth, “will—slather—”

“Go slather yourself,” Steve hisses back. Bucky does get a few solid smears in, but Steve throws him halfway down the beach in short order, leaving Bucky skidding through the sand in a stopping crouch. He’ll have sand in his prosthetic for days.

“Let it go, Buck,” Steve tells him, and all Bucky’s efforts wind up achieving is that Steve gets a much more mottled sunburn—like a cow, or like a dog rolled in pink mud. A lot more crankiness gets directed at Bucky when it starts to peel as a result, like it’s his fault Steve thinks he’s too good not to roast to death.

“Ahh,” Steve hisses, rolling the skin off his shoulders. “This is so much worse. I don’t know where the burn begins and ends—”

“Then wear,” Bucky says mildly, turning the page on his book, “fucking, sunscreen.”

“ _No._ ”

“Guess your skin is gonna keep peeling off in weird streaks then.”

“You're gonna do this to me again?”

“I will do this,” Bucky promises, “as many times as it takes for you to get the goddamn picture and put this stuff _on_ —”

“It’s disgusting! It’s wet, and it smells like… chemical coconuts.”

“Less disgusting than shedding your fucking skin?”

“Leave it alone, Bucky!”

“No,” Bucky shoots back; and Bucky always keeps his promises.

There are a few obstacles to Operation: Get Sunscreen On Steve. One is that Steve’s stubbornness only digs deeper when he's being challenged. That means that what once might have been settled with an honest discussion has progressed far past that point by now. They will fight this until one of them finds victory, or one of them dies. They understand this mutually and without discussion.

Another obstacle is that Steve is very large, and has a lot of exposed skin to cover. A third is that he pops boners like a champ. While Bucky is not above public humiliation for the promotion of health and safety, he thinks Steve really _will_ get mad at him if Bucky uses all his strength to subdue him and the result is that Captain America's swim shorts tent magnificently in the middle of a public beach. He doesn’t want to actually upset Steve beyond the usual measures of irritation that define their relationship. 

That just means he has to get creative.

The prosthetic is frustrating to deal with at times, especially when it malfunctions. Other times, it comes in goddamn handy. After a little prodding and experimentation, Bucky is able to slide a plastic tube among the neural wiring in the prosthetic. It carries a decent amount of sunscreen for his purposes. He installs a small pack of the stuff up near his shoulder and finds a slat in his arm that doesn’t open unless he moves it in a really specific way. 

Rolling his wrist this way and that creates an alternating stream of sunscreen, which—though kind of suggestive—is also pretty effective.

It's... really suggestive. It's really fucking suggestive, though. Bucky tries to get the giggling out of his system in the safety of the bathroom lest his mission go tits-up on account of laughing too hard. This is serious business, no laughing matter. So the sunscreen looks like jizz. It always did. It was always gonna.

The afternoon, at the outset, proceeds as expected. Bucky goes through the usual motions: handing Steve a tube of sunscreen, which he immediately tosses over his shoulder; casually trying to smear sunscreen on Steve’s body while Steve fights him off with one hand; putting him in a headlock and trying to pin him to the ground, to no avail. Just the usual beach stuff on an August afternoon. 

But when Bucky realizes Steve fought him off without even putting his book down, he gets an idea. All Bucky has to do is lull him into a false sense of security. Stealth hasn’t worked, but there’s always the honeypot. 

With perfect grace and innocence, Bucky hitches a knee over Steve’s legs an hour later, giving him doe eyes while Steve's still reading. "Hi,” Bucky says, full of affection. His fingers grasp at Steve's free hand.

Steve blinks at him, smile twitching gently onto his face. “Hi.”

Bucky entwines their fingers tighter, holding Steve’s eye with abject adoration—then he holds Steve's hand tight against the ground and lets the stream of sunscreen flow.

Steve watches in horror, as the thick white liquid spurts out over his chest. “Noooo,” he says, almost in slow motion. Bucky’s planned himself pretty well. Steve’s one hand is incapacitated by Bucky, while the other is still holding a book. In all the years Bucky’s known him, he's never known Steve to be capable of dropping a book, sketch or otherwise, without due care—except when he’s being outright attacked. 

The affection has crossed his wires. Bucky has him trapped. Steve’s too agitated to figure out how to put the book down with the gentleness the moment seemed to command, which has left his fingers occupied with the pages even as he tries to push Bucky away. This leaves Bucky almost free reign. He rubs the sunscreen liberally across Steve’s chest in six swipes of his palm before Steve’s figured himself out.

Sam, who has been looking on horrified, finds his voice. “What,” he says loudly, “the fuck is _wrong_ with you? What the fuck kind of sex game—oh, no." Sam gets up and starts walking away. “Don't involve me in this, you are not gonna involve me—”

Even as he's concentrated on his mission, the hilarity of the situation finds Bucky strikingly. He sinks his teeth into his lip, trying desperately to get a respectful grip on Steve. Steve, meanwhile, has started wiggling like he’s fourteen and Bucky has him in a headlock he doesn't really want to get out of. “Let me go!”

Bucky just bats the book out of Steve’s hand, and then lovingly shoves him to the side before Steve can figure out what's happened. Another long string of white shoots out of his arm as Bucky flips, sunscreen spreading across Steve's back as Bucky moves in an arc over his shoulder. Steve turns his head to find him, which puts him off-balance; Bucky shoves him to the ground and digs an elbow into the middle of his back to keep him tipped over as Bucky rubs it in. 

“Buck, stop!” Steve shouts, but Bucky knows the slopes of Steve’s body too well to need to leave him there for long. He finishes off with a quick swipe at his shoulders, then takes off down the beach before Steve can so much as right himself.

“I’m getting you back for this!” Steve yells as he sprints after him, and that bastard can fucking run if he can do anything, so he makes good on his word in seconds flat. He throws Bucky over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and wades out into the water, throwing him into the surf with no respect for his beloved hairstyle.

It was still worth it. Steve doesn’t even peel a little bit that night, and he even begrudgingly admits—with Bucky lying on top of him, pinning him down with an elbow in his back again—that the chemical coconut cumstain might actually serve a dermatological purpose.

Which means Bucky _won,_ which is the important thing.

Sam still won’t look directly at him, though. He's not sure what he's gonna do about that.

  



End file.
